The European offshore wind industry saw new capacity installations decline by 84 MW (5.34%) in 2014 as the sector stabilised following record figures the previous year.
In 2014, 408 new offshore turbines were fully grid connected, adding 1,483 MW to the European system. The total installed capacity for Europe now stands at 8,045MW in 74 offshore wind farms in 11 European countries. In 2014, the UK accounted for over half of all new installations (54.8%) with Germany in second (35.7%) and Belgium (9.5%) making up the rest. But for 2015, Germany is expected to install more offshore capacity than the UK, which has dominated installations in Europe for the past three years. The largest wind farms to be fully completed will be RWE’s Gwynt y Mor (576MW) in North Wales followed by Global Tech 1 (400MW) in the German North Sea.